The Monthly Line: May 2021

My reads for this month

Hello everyone, I hope you’ve had a lovely bank holiday. I’m excited that it’s finally warm enough for reading in the park! 

This month I have gone on a Korean kick, with one South and two North, plus two biographies and a prize winner.

One. Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah translated by Deborah Smith
The experience of reading this short book was a bit like how I imagine taking mild hallucinogenics would be. Or like hanging out with drunk people when you are very very sober. The plot and the characters are circular, with recurring imagery and a general feeling of not being sure who is who and whether that person is actually the same as the other one just with a different name. I mostly enjoyed the ride though. 

Two. What does Jeremy think? by Suzanne Heywood
This huge tome is a biography of Jeremy Heywood, the author’s husband, who was a civil servant who worked for five Prime Ministers before he died in his fifties of lung cancer in 2018. In some respects it’s fascinating as he was there for all the big events of the past 20 or so years - the financial crisis, 9/11, Brexit - in others I was a bit disappointed as it is mostly a point by point rundown of the events of the past 20 or so years, with not much meat or gossip to dig your teeth into. I would recommend it if you’re interested in the machinations of the civil service, but probably not otherwise. 

Three. A song for a new day by Sarah Pinsker
First things first, this is set both before and after a (fictional) deadly pandemic, so don’t read it if it’s a bit soon for you! However, if you don’t mind that, then I would definitely recommend it. Sarah Pinsker is a musician as well as a writer, and she has a brilliant way of writing about music and the effect it has, which is surprisingly hard I think. I also liked how she wrote about the conflict between online and virtual concerts, and imagines how they could work alongside each other. Definitely lots to enjoy in this one.  

Four. Braised pork by An Yu
Another slightly trippy short book! I enjoyed this one more though - probably because it had a more linear plot and everyone seemed to be who they say they are. It’s set between Beijing and Tibet, two very different worlds, and the action begins after the main character’s husband dies leaving a picture of a fish with a man’s head next to him. I liked that it went straight into the plot, and the cultural implications of what it means to be a widow were interesting, if a bit under-explored. 

Five. The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
This just won the Jhalak Prize and I can totally see why. It’s a coming of age novel about Kirabo, a girl growing up in rural Uganda in the late seventies. It’s funny, full of big and beautiful characters, and has a brilliant heroine at it’s heart who you want to follow everywhere. It’s also a book that has things to say - about being a woman, about how we treat women, about class and about growing up. 

Six. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi 
This was a book club pick, which had very mixed reviews in our group. I enjoyed how it spanned lots of different topics like work, race, science, religion, mental health, others felt it was a bit shallow thanks to that kaleidoscopic view. We all agreed though that the way it talks about addiction was brilliant. It’s so gracious and expansive with everyone, from the addict who can’t beat his addiction, to the mother and sister who both have their own ways of dealing with the fall out. The ending was a little bit too neat for me though. 

Seven. The Impossible State by Victor Cha
And now for something totally different! This deep dive into the North Koren dictatorship was lent to me by a friend and I found it totally fascinating. Cha is an academic who worked for the Bush administration in the early noughties so he has the benefit of both his research background and having actually been to North Korea. It is quite academic in style so I did glaze over on some of the bits about the state of the economy (but I read enough to know that it’s not good!), but his history of how the Kim family has cemented its rule was fascinating. It was published in 2012 and finishes with him predicting that the newly anointed leader - Kim Jong Un - will soon fall as he hasn’t had time to prepare for his rise to power. That obviously did not come to pass, so then I read book number eight...  

Eight. The Great Successor by Anna Fifield
This essentially picks up where Cha leaves off, and gives a more journalistic account of the youngest Kim leader. She talks to dozens of people who have fled the country, many of whom were high up in the hierarchy so they had actually met the ‘Dear Leader’. She also speaks to the media team from Vice who went to the country with Dennis Rodman (an American basketball player from the Michael Jordan era) and partied raucously with Kim Jong Un. It’s a fascinating and disquieting account of how Kim Jong Un has managed to keep the country going, and shore up his power base, whilst still keeping 24 million people under his thumb. 

Nine. Blue ticket by Sophie Mackintosh
I was left a bit disappointed by this. It imagines a world when after a girl starts her period, she is given either a white or a blue ticket. White ticket girls have been deemed worthy of having children, and blue ticket girls are forced to have an IUD fitted and never allowed to have kids, supposedly because of some kind of default. Mackintosh is very good at writing about bodies, visceral feels like a good adjective to use, and I liked some bits, but found other parts annoying. Like the fact that everyone smokes (I know that’s really petty), and the way the wider bits of the world were imagined. All in all a bit unsatisfying.   

Ten. Inventory of a life mislaid by Marina Warner
This book is described as ‘an unreliable memoir’ of the author’s parents and their life before she was born and up to when she was about 6. They met in Italy during the second world war, when her father was stationed there. He was in his late 30s and her mother - Ilia - was in her early 20s. They married, moved back to dreary, ration-plagued England, before escaping to Egypt for a few years, only to run into the beginnings of a revolution. I loved the bits in Egypt, and when she talks about her mother and how she tried to adjust to being the wife of a certain kind of English gentleman, but because she was just a child, she doesn’t know the details and she shies away from inventing or assuming them. Which is fair enough! She also goes on quite a few tangents, half of which were interesting to me, but probably another reader would find the other half more their thing. 

Book of the month: Unsurprisingly my pick this month is The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. Big plot, big characters, big heart, loved it. 

What are you reading at the moment? Or do you need a recommendation for someone? Get in touch and I’ll try to help!